Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Author's note: Once my first outline done I realized I had "borrowed" from Borges' Book of Sand and John Carpenter's Prince of Darkness. I'm putting these two titles here so you can check them out when you find the time.

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And there is something else I thought about.

All this room they gave us. All this time I spent taking it when I could have been filling it. If this box is infinite there's enough space for us and all I could have made up about it. Maybe that's why they've lost from the beginning. It contained what I forgot to write. What I didn't. In between the billion typewriting monkeys, a billion things could get nipped. A few words about how I, the naked ape, could write a few words. About you. Of you. Your name. Your thoughts. Everything you ever said. Everything you didn't, couldn't. Everything I remember. Everything I forgot. A word for the color of your eyes. A word to remind me you forgive me.

*****

Friday (eleven days)

The smiles didn't alter when it was finally Lenore's turn. They were still grins stuck in muscles with neither variations nor nuances. Polite.

She stood from her chair to speak at 9am, the time workday began the other days.

The mid-September staff meetings at Deep Green Alliance were relaxed, happy, friendly; everybody was supposed to be mellow from the summer break, and the starting year of the company was only about last year's performance and not yet about the projections for Quarter 1. But it was 9am. Everybody was anxious to go to their desks.

But she replaced the pie charts on the screen with the schedule for the next internal newsletter--The Halloween Special--and in it would be more pie charts, bottom lines and headshots but most importantly the one announcement everybody would read: the Halloween party. And only then the smiles twitched a bit.

This spurt of attention helped her segue to the part of Monthly Green everybody would only pretend they would read: the ten extra pages Lenore had engaged herself to write: a scary short story.

"...I wanna thank Eliza of Management who suggested the idea after she learned about my literary quirks. Proof that she does read our resumes."

The laughs went convincing enough and the beat allowed her to show and explain the cardboard box:

"So as I explained, you're all invited to put your scary story idea into the box. It can be anonymous, of course. You have till next Friday to fill it with all your spooky anecdotes, outlines, or cinematic universe, I don't know... then it's up to me to make them into an entertaining story. The box will be in the breakroom of Accounting, next to the coffee machine. The slit is too thin to throw your empty cups inside."

The few laughs she got bent toward embarrassment. Only Eliza nodded. Winked even. The rest of the frontline of smiles was back to polite. The floors above and beneath were already at the job. Lenore cut her presentation short. The double doors of the meeting room opened, people spread out.

She went back to the Accounting floor and put her suggestion box between the coffee machine and the microwave and then she went to work on some pie charts all day.

At 7pm, she took it home. It was surprisingly heavy.

*****

Lenore locked the door of her apartment and took her shoes off.

She exhaled with relief and excitement, and secretly with fatigue. As every day, her real workday could begin: writing.

Supposedly.

The backlog of books for her next haul video was still there on her desk. Her real desk. It had been for weeks now. As every day she would not dare log on to her YouTube account, check her inbox, too scared to see the hundreds of impatient comments and messages--or a lack thereof. To see the stagnating subscriber count. Too scared to admit her channel was defunct and it was just a lack of commitment.

Like every evening she took some time from her real workday to take a shower, have dinner, clean her kitchen a little, watch a little internet, then inexplicably waste some more time, ten minutes here, five minutes there... Then it was midnight again, time to sleep. Again.

What's it gonna be when I have children, she thought.

Teeth brushed and pajama on, she got in bed, took the suggestion box with her.

The white ceiling welcomed her, the last sight of each of her days, where she could draw her last thoughts.

Today was how she aced public speaking this morning.

Lenore ripped the two pieces of tape off the lids.

The 8x8x8 box was full.

She couldn't believe it. They were forty-five at the meeting but it was like the whole building had come to play her horror story contest, every floor of Deep Green, plus the guys at TravelGuess next door, and probably even the Störme-Sterne people from across the street, they were at least two millions in that skyscraper that stole their sun all day.

The surface layer was all letter-size sheets. No torn papers.

Lenore was actually...touched.

She unfolded a first one.

THERE'S SOMEONE BEHIND YOU

Just this. Handwritten. Centered. Capital letters. Black ink.

Ok...

There was only the wall behind her. Still she stirred her legs under the covers and rubbed the back of her neck. Like when someone tells you the room has cockroaches and the entirety of your skin suddenly gets on the watch.

She'd never liked horror. Some parts of Harry Potter had frightened her sleepless as a kid. So Stephen King, fucking Lovecraft and Ligotti had always been a no-go. But hey, it's Halloween. And Eliza was enthusiastic. And she's not 10 anymore, she's 23, a big girl, she knew a thing or two about horror. About being scared at least.

A STORY THAT WOULD BE LIKE JURASSIC PARK ... WITH ZOMBIES. YOU GO ON VACATION THERE AND YOU CAN HUNT ZOMBIES LIKE A SAFARI. AND AT THE END THE MAIN CHARACTER GETS BITTEN BY A ZOMBIE AND TURNS INTO ONE AND THE YEAR AFTER ONE OF HIS COWORKER COMES AND KILLS HIM.

Lenore cracked up, not because it was good but because it was adorable. Then because it was not good. Or maybe it was.

Among the papers, the slips, the sticky notes, the torn pages, she found a small strip, folded as to form a long accordion once unfolded.

It said:

v=dQw4w9WgXcQ

It took her some time to figure out it was the end of a YouTube address. But when she did and checked, she sighed it was going to be a long week.

*****

Around 1am, after a few videos from the suggestions sidebar, she closed her laptop and went back to the box, determined to read at least one good thing tonight.

THE HAUNTED DILDO

A GIRL DECIDES TO USE HER DILDO ON THE BALCONY FOR A CHANGE. IT'S A NICE SUMMER NIGHT AND ALL.

SHES DOING HER BUSINESS AND SHE NOTICES A MAN WATCHING HER FROM A WINDOW IN THE BULDING IN FRONT. HE LOOKS HANDSOME SO SHE LETS HIM PEEP AND IT ACTUALLY MAKES HER COME HARDER COS SHE'S A SKANK LIKE THAT.

THE NEXT DAY SHE ASKS WHO LIVES THERE AND THE LANDLORD TELLS HER THE APPARTMENT HAS BEEN EMPTY FOR YEARS CAUSE THERE WAS A MURDER OR SOMETHING.

THE GUY WAS A GHOST.

Jesus Christ...

Tomorrow was Saturday but she really should go to sleep. Since she had started to cut back on her antidepressants, Lenore tended to oversleep and didn't want that. She had a lot of things to do. She hadn't planned what exactly, but she did.

As she put back the box on the floor, she heard a thump.

Someone had managed to stick an object inside.

She shook the box, it thumped again, sounded quite big.

With no fear for papercuts, she sank a hand down the sheets.

She felt plastic, gripped it and pulled out the last thing she expected to see in her home.

A dildo.

She was no expert but it was the basic type. A purple bullet-shaped dildo with buttons on the base to make it vibrate. Seven reasonable inches. Brand new in its clamshell pack.

"Made in China," she read out loud from the paperboard card inside.

So the kind that gives you butt cancer cause it's made out of cheap plastic.

There were instructions in five different languages, a speech bubble that read '5 Super Speeds !', a picture of some random whore with a better ass than her, but there was no note to accompany the offensive gift. No GOTCHA, no LOL, no HAPPY BIRTHDAY. It wasn't her birthday.

If a man put it there, it's harassment, she sneered, despite herself. If it's a woman... She brushed off the pavlovian thought and tossed the sextoy back into the waves of paper.

She turned off the light and tried some shuteye. Since she had cut back on her antidepressants she had a hard time falling asleep.

2am, she saw.

For fuck's sake...

She thought. And thought and rolled over, and thought.

How did they even pull that off?

The practical joke was unlike anyone at work to begin with. No one she knew at least.

The inner monologue tossed and turned as much as she tossed and turned in the bed, looking for a good posture, one that wouldn't make her hear her heartbeat inside the pillow.

Until her thoughts caught on something.

The package is sealed at least. Means it's unused.

She thought casually that she hadn't masturbated in two weeks. A long time, even by her standards.

The fight for sleep calmed down, until Lenore was lying on her back, eyes to the ceiling, paradoxically immobile and tense.

One more minute passed and suddenly she reached out for the thingy and held it in the patch of streetlamp light filtering through her shades.

If I don't say anything about this on Monday, some people will have a good laugh behind my back. But if I say anything it's gonna be a legal massacre.

Down the street, a car drove by. People out on a Friday. Having fun.

I don't have batteries anyway.

I never tried a vibrator before. Must be so intense.

Too intense.

I can't be-lieve they did that shit.

No way this crap is touching my skin.

I have a few condoms left from Brian...

Her nipples hardened under her oversized t-shirt.

She refrained from rolling over because she knew she would then feel a cold wet spot in her boxers.

There were two batteries in the TV remote. Three more in her alarm clock.

2:39am

"Fh-uuuuuuck," she sighed out.

And got up.

If this thing vibrates like an earthquake I'm throwing it away.

I wanna see how it works. If I'm destined to write about haunted dildos at least let's see how a dildo works.

It took three minutes to scissor the package open without slicing her fingers, a couple more to clean the toy in the sink, to look and touch around for any default, to put the batteries in, sit back comfortably in her bed and eventually a soft buzzing covered the sound of nervous breathing in her bedroom.

The noise wasn't as menacing as expected.

She wrapped her hand around the smooth shaft.

"Ok. It vibrates alright."

She turned it off, dropped it onto the covers.

In the restored silence, she easily pictured how it would feel on her clitoris and it made her blush.

How it would feel inside her vagina was more difficult and her imagination came up with strange uncharted reactions the dildo could awake. This made her uneasy. A well-known, well-hated anxiety. Often accompanied by the image of her mother slapping her fingers for biting her nails.

Lenore pushed the On button twice. Speed #2 resounded. A bit faster, a bit louder. Three more pushes to Max Speed. This one was low and ample and rough. Almost hilarious.

One more and the cycle ended, the toy shut down.

Again, the silence left Lenore facing her empty hesitations.

Her legs stirred under the covers, this time in a very specific way and Lenore was nonplussed, if not bewildered, that in the back of her head she had already decided she would masturbate. And not as a frustrating substitute for sex: masturbating for the sake of masturbating.

And then she rolled her eyes, as she additionally realized she would have to decide which speed she wanted for her clitoris.

Though, a nicely warm flush came up with the reasons why she settled on #2.

It flowed from her face to her whole body. Her shirt was chaffing her nipples.

But the shirt would stay on. As if people were was watching, she would keep her clothes on. She even tucked the covers up around her shoulders, and sitting up against the headboard, her feet flat on the mattress, she made it look like a pelvic exam.

She placed the tip on her left inner thigh, as close to her crotch as she could dare.

Two clicks, the thing buzzed. It tickled.

She let the doohickey do its thing on the side; her free hand had a more serious affair to attend: ease under her boxers and through her unkempt bush, down to her labia.

Lenore was definitely wet.

Her fingers bent back up, spread her open, pulled the hood of her clitoris.

It didn't tickle anymore.

She caressed her sweet little button, just to pet it, reassure it. And that she so secretly cherished it this way made her flush all over one last time before...

Her other hand moved just an inch upward and the alien object made contact with her sex through the fabric.

"hhhOh my God!" Immediately she pulled it away in shock. And just as immediately put it back on, to be sure.

And yes, a moan or a gasp escaped her mouth as the vibrations broke through. Yes, it was more intense, it was more different than anything she could have imagined.

She pulled the dildo away again, stopped right on the edge, panting, whimpering. Five seconds. Five seconds had been enough to feel the domino effect inside her that lead to her orgasms. Five seconds to realize her face was a lewd grimace of surprise.

And she hadn't even moved her hand.

She closed her knees together, turned the thing off, turned the lights on.

She trod the comforter away and looked down at her body.

"Oh my God..."

So that's why everybody has one, she thought because she wouldn't think So that's what I've been missing out all these years.

Her clitoris was throbbing, as surprised as herself. Phantom vibrations were still inside and reluctantly fading out.

She rubbed herself to scramble them off and then, forgetting about the supposed watchers, she pulled her underwear down.

She had two choices: get herself off the traditional way, or use the toy and have, hypothetically, the biggest orgasm of her life.

But it was more than that--it was beyond all that--The pleasure inside her clit she had glimpsed, it wanted nothing to do with the short way to climax. It was a pleasure as long as warmth, or inner peace. Something to savor for as long as...

The journey more important than the destination. It made Lenore smirk how a guilty as charged jill-off session had taken a buddhic turn. But it was true. They may not be as intimate and gracious as her fingers but the vibrations of the toy were something huge. So huge there were things inside. And as a writer, things hiding inside bigger things called her forth. Turned her on.

Also she was horny. Lenore was human at the end of the day.

Her heart was beating fast and hard. It went harder and faster because she opened the drawer of her nightstand and took a condom wrapper out of it.

Three left, she saw.

2:54am

She took her shirt off, it gave her nipples a break. Now she was completely nude. She hadn't masturbated naked in years. In fact she never did.

With two trembling hands, she rubbed uncomfortable shivers off of her breasts, turned them into manageable heat.

Two fingers did the same for the hole of her vagina. And while she couldn't believe it, she got on all fours to reach deeper inside herself. While not extinguishing any fire, her massage soothed her muscles, got her patiently ready.

Propped up on her elbows, her two unsure hands put a condom on the dildo. Then going treacherously confident, her hands turned the vibrator on. Her confident back lay down on the bed and her confident legs spread a little.

She looked down at the cleft of her pussy. Watched the tip of the dildo approach, its purple color paled by the transparent yellow of the condom.

It touched her and she heard herself moan. She couldn't believe how it sounded. Almost like crying. And these vocalizations destroyed her efforts to delay the moment she would move on to her clitoris.

There was no way to get ready for this. Besides delaying.

The vibrations made contact with her delicate genital skin.

"Aaaaaaahh..."

It came out naturally. She couldn't believe it.

Her hand began the slightest circling motion. She let out another moan. Usually those only appeared at the peak of her orgasms. Not anymore.

Now she discovered that there was such a thing as fighting back her orgasm. Holding it back with every technique, every little tweaking of her flesh that she knew, every muscle, every tendon, every breath, hold it and enjoy the new sensation blasting in her, hold it until she would find it too wrong to feel it, which would only take a matter of seconds.

She pulled the toy away not to come too quickly. And of course she couldn't believe that it meant come too soon. Usually it never took her more than five minutes to masturbate, right now it would take five seconds to come. And she wanted it to last all night. It was the only thing she controlled, her will to live this moment.

She turned on all fours again and widened the circular motion over her clit, fast and rigid.

It was like when Brian used to take her doggystyle. When she loved to let him take her like that, see her like that, hear her like that, when she knew he was looking at himself penetrating her so deep and understood him, when he spread her cheeks and looked at her asshole and this gaze felt just like a tongue.

Her anus was contracting, to the rhythm of her pleasure, open for all the ghosts to see, the ones supposed to be behind her tonight.

Her pussyhole too. Pulsating over wetness. Begging.

She glided the full length of the shaft along her slit, up and down, and almost paused when the tip rested against the wet opening, but she withdrew, thinking, No, not that.

Instead she turned to her side, lifted a leg up and pressed hard against her clit, saturated it, afraid that she wouldn't have the same resolve next time she ventured.

So she made sure the vibration seeped in her, thick.

The cries it pulled out of her mouth were from a new woman. One Lenore didn't know she was. In a matter of one evening, she proved, through sexuality, to be an immense being. Immense like ambition, inspiration, strength. Ideals.

She could now understand those diagrams of the anatomy of the clitoris she saw on Reddit. She got them. Got how this tiny nub was in reality this huge strange four-legged creature snuggling her vagina. She could feel the whole of it for the first time, stiff, rattling, and about to come.

Her orgasm began with a long-drawn-out groan, cut short by a first contraction of pure pleasure that hammered in her brain. She pushed the tip even deeper into her clit. She moaned with her mouth open and her eyes closed. But no, she needed to be on all fours, so she did, opened, liberated, just in time to feel all the following contractions of her two very jealous holes.

She couldn't stop wailing, blow after blow. Until it brought laughs and tears. Lenore had never come so hard she cried and/or laughed before. A gift from the new woman.